The present invention relates to a window-based ATM cell stream regulator for monitoring whether a cell is sent in accordance with a notified value of a communication bandwidth in a communication network of an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM).
A function of monitoring a cell bandwidth in an ATM communication network is to previously determine an allowable cell bandwidth to be used by each terminal before communication starts, and to monitor at an inlet portion of the ATM communication network whether each terminal sends a cell or not in accordance with a corresponding allowable number during communication. The function of monitoring the cell communication bandwidth is generally called a Usage Parameter Control (UPC).
Several prior art UPC systems have been proposed. As one such system, there is a credit jumping window (CJW) system. In the CJW system, monitoring sections having time intervals, which are prescribed by the allowable number of the cell bandwidth, are successively set on a time base. The monitoring sections having such time intervals are called windows. In the CJW system, it is judged whether arriving cells satisfy the notified value of the communication bandwidth or not by counting the number of arriving cells in each window.